Why Copper Is Running Out of Road The history of electronics is full of predictions that turned out to be wrong. One of my favorites dates back to the early days of structured networking. Around thirty years ago, I attended a training course on premises wiring. At the time, 100 Mbps Ethernet was considered cutting-edge…
The Hardware Pioneers Max exhibition is just a few weeks away. It started as a community meetup for engineers involved in the Internet of Things (IoT) and connected devices. Over the last decade, it has evolved into something much bigger. That evolution is reflected in this year’s move to ExCeL London. The event has grown…
Modern electronic systems are evolving at an extraordinary pace. Artificial intelligence, cloud computing, industrial automation, edge processing, and advanced embedded systems are all driving major increases in bandwidth, processing power, and overall system complexity. In this environment, industry standards have become more important than ever. Industry standards are no longer just compliance checklists. They provide…
In the previous articles in this series, I explored how PCIe performance is increasingly defined by the physical channel. The next step is to look beyond the board itself. What happens when PCIe is extended across cables, enclosures, and complete systems? At that point, PCIe stops being just a board-level interface and becomes a system-level…
The latest episode of the Samtec Transmission Line podcast was released last week, and in it, we spoke with the irrepressible Ash from Samtec India. India is a vital market for the global electronics industry. As Ash put it, it’s not the next big opportunity. It is the opportunity. A vast, tech-savvy population combined with…
Part 3 – Choosing the Right Interconnect Strategy In the first part of this series, I tried to understand why PCIe becomes more difficult as speeds increase. The conclusion was that as edge rates rise and margins shrink, the physical layer becomes harder to ignore. In the second part, I looked at where control actually…
Why the Question Makes Sense. And Why the Answer Is Not a Single Number. We are frequently asked to provide MTBF, MTTF or FIT data for our connectors. It is a reasonable request. Many system-level reliability models require those inputs, and procurement documents often include a box labeled “MTBF”. Engineers working in aerospace, defence, telecom…
Decoding PCIe: A Mechanical Engineer’s View Part 2 In the first part of this series, I tried to understand why PCIe becomes more difficult as speeds increase. The conclusion was not especially dramatic. As edge rates rise and margins shrink, the physical layer becomes harder to ignore. In this instalment, we look at how the…
PCIe is not an area where I would claim deep expertise. My background is mechanical, and most of my day-to-day work focuses on connectors, materials, and geometry rather than protocol specifications. However, PCIe is very important to Samtec. We are involved in shaping the interface itself, and many of our products are designed specifically to…
Designing Interconnects at the Edge of Performance For decades, improvements in computing performance have followed a familiar path. Faster processors, denser packaging, and higher data rates have driven steady advances across data centers, high-performance computing, and supercomputing platforms. Today, quantum computing represents the most extreme point on that curve. Although quantum computing is fundamentally different…
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